Fan-made Duke 3D Unreal Engine 3 update is now officially licensed

A fan-made update to Duke Nukem 3D using the Unreal Engine 3 is coming, and …

Duke Nukem is a big name in gaming; any story we write about the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever is almost sure to be one of the week's most popular. The interest in the character and the game has never been higher, and the reason is simple: Duke Nukem 3D was a classic in the world of PC (and now console) gaming. One fan has taken his love of the game to the next level by beginning the process of updating the experience with the Unreal Engine 3, but his story is a unique one. You see, he has been given a non-commercial license to update—and then release—his version of the game.

A formative experience

"Duke Nukem 3D was the first multiplayer FPS experience I had," the man behind the project Frederick "fresch" Schreiber told Ars. "Back when I was a kid, I was a huge Schwarzenegger and Stallone fan, and Duke was the Schwarzenegger of gaming."

He played Duke all day, "raping" his mother's phone bill while playing over a modem. "Duke3D was also my first entry into level editing and modding, so it has a very special place in my gaming history," he explained.

Schreiber hasn't had the best luck with these projects. An update to Daikatana was abandoned due to lack of interest. An update to SiN: Reloaded was shut down by MumboJumbo, which owns the rights to the game. For Duke Nukem he took a different tact and contacted Scott Miller from 3D Realms, and was asked to create some screenshots to show how his version of the game would look. The screens he created got everyone's attention.

"I contacted George Brussard and Scott Miller, to start a conversation about the project—the shots managed to convince Scott Miller to a certain degree—but the project was only doable if Take-Two would approve it," Schreiber wrote.

He decided to go through Gearbox first, thinking that would increase his chances at an official blessing. "I contacted AdamF, who passed me through to PJ Putnam, Vice President and General Counsel of Gearbox Software." Gearbox ultimately decided to support the project, and gave Schreiber a personal, non-commercial license to Duke Nukem 3D. He can't sell the work or profit from it directly, but he can use the characters and design of the game without fear of being shut down.

Duke Nukem Next-Gen

The project is currently still looking for qualified individuals, but it's moving along. "Planning is everything. I can honestly say that I havent done any mapping in the last two weeks," Schreiber told Ars. "Getting everything together, team members, project management systems, forums, SVN, webhosting, filesharing, To-Do lists, the game design document, applications, etc. is extremely time consuming."

Schreiber's role is currently more management, but he's hoping to get back to mapping once the final team is in place. He also said that a multiplayer test should be available before the end of the year.

"We want to do everything we can not to end in an "endless cycle," as other projects do," he said, perhaps referring to certain other Duke Nukem projects. "We want to play this as much as you do."

Using the Unreal Engine

For someone familiar with creating Duke Nukem content, the world has certainly changed for the better. "To create a game in the [Unreal Development Kit] is a huge and fun process," Schreiber said. "Game development is very different today than it was back in the Duke 3D days. We have all the tools to basically create what we want."

What has changed is the size of the team it takes to create something this ambitious. "From the first concept art, to the final in-engine model, is a long process. But the team is working harder than you can imagine, creating amazing results every day." Schreiber also claims to have some industry professionals helping with the project, due to the high level of interest in the original game.

One of the screenshots created for Scott Miller and George Broussard

The game is now using the same engine as Duke Nukem Forever, so there will soon be a way to play Duke Nukem 3D in a way that won't be so hard on modern eyes. The ability to work in the open, knowing that the project won't be hit with a cease and desist letter, is a huge advantage when it comes to recruiting talent and getting the community organized in support. We've all had our hearts broken due to fan-made projects never reaching completion, and that's still a possibility here. The good news is that all signs point to a high-quality experience--one we will hopefully be able to try very soon.

"I hope you'll follow the project, and I'm looking forward to the frag-fest once the multiplayer test is released," Schreiber said. So are we, my friend. So are we.

In the "next-gen" test video, oddly I like the orignal/before better. Not sure why, maybe the new one just looks like every other 3D game these days.

While I do hope they are careful to maintain the brightness and life that parts of the original had (there were plenty of dark spots too mind you) I think it looks excellent, particularly given that the project is still at such a relatively early stage. There will be plenty of time to refine the look of things as they go along, and introduce some of their own flourishes as well if needed. Getting all the little bits of pieces right that made Duke feel like Duke might be tricky, but if even DNF can actually get released then what the hell, I'll dare to hope that this turns out well too.

If well executed I think it will introduce some new people who never played the original and never would. It's a very fun looking project, and I'm particularly happy that they were able to get an official license for it. It would be nice if it does well and perhaps helps show certain other companies that they don't have to squash fan projects of this sort.

While I think the old look of duke3d is fine I still wouldn't mind seeing this facelift reach completion. It is hard to get the newer gen gamers interested in a game that doesn't meet their "standards" in graphics......

I can easily ignore graphics for new games and get to the guts of game play and half the time new games are woefully lacing in solid gameplay....

Please, not this again. They're called videogames for a reason: the visual aspect is, in fact, an absolutely key part of the experience, along with audio (sound effects, music, voice acting), gameplay, characters, world, plot, etc. Yes, nailing any one aspect of those while the rest is terrible does not make for a good game, and there are certainly plenty out there that only hit one part of the equation. Yes, doing extremely well in some areas can make up with many of us for falling a bit behind in other areas.

But excellent games hit all the parts at least adequately, and Duke Nukem 3D was no exception either don't forget. That "3D" (2.5D in reality but whatever) part mattered, and when it came out those graphics were awesome. Graphics were absolutely a big part of D3D, along with a fun badass stereotype packed main dude, delicious cheesy dialog, fun wild weapons, levels, and so on. Let's not have any revisionist history about how graphics weren't so important back then though.

It's an ambitious project but good luck to them. And if they did decide to go for some more retro look but with smooth modern controls that would be OK too, but either way having something that runs at normal res on a modern screen would be cool.

If well executed I think it will introduce some new people who never played the original and never would. It's a very fun looking project, and I'm particularly happy that they were able to get an official license for it. It would be nice if it does well and perhaps helps show certain other companies that they don't have to squash fan projects of this sort.

I can easily ignore graphics for new games and get to the guts of game play and half the time new games are woefully lacing in solid gameplay....

Please, not this again. They're called videogames for a reason: the visual aspect is, in fact, an absolutely key part of the experience, along with audio (sound effects, music, voice acting), gameplay, characters, world, plot, etc. Yes, nailing any one aspect of those while the rest is terrible does not make for a good game, and there are certainly plenty out there that only hit one part of the equation. Yes, doing extremely well in some areas can make up with many of us for falling a bit behind in other areas.

But excellent games hit all the parts at least adequately, and Duke Nukem 3D was no exception either don't forget. That "3D" (2.5D in reality but whatever) part mattered, and when it came out those graphics were awesome. Graphics were absolutely a big part of D3D, along with a fun badass stereotype packed main dude, delicious cheesy dialog, fun wild weapons, levels, and so on. Let's not have any revisionist history about how graphics weren't so important back then though.

It's an ambitious project but good luck to them. And if they did decide to go for some more retro look but with smooth modern controls that would be OK too, but either way having something that runs at normal res on a modern screen would be cool.

No no no no same reason why film sucks these days video games are interactive visual fiction, unlike film that just lays there limp trying to spark your imagination. Sorry Gameplay and mechanics is everything without it games are film only are written look worse and more frustrating to finish due to poor interaction implantation. The new standard is a low one...I want the old standards back...

If well executed I think it will introduce some new people who never played the original and never would. It's a very fun looking project, and I'm particularly happy that they were able to get an official license for it. It would be nice if it does well and perhaps helps show certain other companies that they don't have to squash fan projects of this sort.

Agreed. Duke 3D was one of my first FPS experiences as well and it would be very cool if this project reaches completion. I'm also happy that they were granted permission to breathe new life into the game.

Yes indeed - first and foremost they are games, not videos (else they would be called game videos). The reason we love and remember Duke so many years later is that the game was incredible even if the images were just flat textures. Anyone pining for a remake of Doom 3 with its nice shading but crappy monster closets? Remember how it was summarised as a great tech demo looking for a game? Hardly surprising. Without incredible gameplay don't bother. I hope he gets it right.

Big pat on the back for securing a license. A way better idea than doing the work and then whining about it for ever after.

Not an FPS player personally, but the new version looks nice. I'm not going to jump into the rat hole that is graphics vs gameplay, but I'll just say that I'm still happy playing my Atari 2600 Good luck to the project members. Maybe they can have it done before DNF heh

Not an FPS player personally, but the new version looks nice. I'm not going to jump into the rat hole that is graphics vs gameplay, but I'll just say that I'm still happy playing my Atari 2600 Good luck to the project members. Maybe they can have it done before DNF heh

I think the point being made is that it needn't be graphics versus gameplay, but poor aesthetic design can make it feel like that with the large amounts of tricksy rendering that hardware of today can pull off.

Me? I care about how it looks emotionally, not so much technologically. As comments have pointed out, some parts of Duke are well-lit, others are dark and claustrophobic. I'd hope that a remake would capture the spirit of the original in that respect.

Yes indeed - first and foremost they are games, not videos (else they would be called game videos). The reason we love and remember Duke so many years later is that the game was incredible even if the images were just flat textures. Anyone pining for a remake of Doom 3 with its nice shading but crappy monster closets? Remember how it was summarised as a great tech demo looking for a game? Hardly surprising. Without incredible gameplay don't bother. I hope he gets it right.

Big pat on the back for securing a license. A way better idea than doing the work and then whining about it for ever after.

Ya but games for me have always been about the game play narrative not the graphics,story or anything else. Without a good base to work with its just bad generic dickary being poo'd out for the masses and they same thing applies to music and film tho thier base is context,sound and or story,presentation.

To me, and I know I am such an anal game snob, you can not over look mechanics if you do you wind up with weaker averages(7 being 5 10 years ago,ect) across the board. But I guess this just mirrors humanities own inability to advance anything (politics,religion,ect,ect) without being dim witted clannish sheep 80% of the time...

BigDXLT wrote:

ZippyDSMlee wrote:

Also...do it cell shaded style *hides*

You know, I think this could work. I'm not talking happy cheery windwaker cel shading. I always thought a style like Heavy Metal would rock as an update for Duke Nukem.

*Nod nod* If you stop and give Bioshock a good look through at the models and stuff you can call it cell shaded like, I might hate BS on terms of generic watered down mechanics but from an art perspective it is quite calorie rich.

Fair Use took a step in the right direction with this, for gaming at least.

It can;t be fair use as the CP owners ok'd it, I think that in order to claim true fair use you have to not be ok'd by the owners and yet the court and legal system can not touch you.

Yes, amend that to be considered "fair use" [instead of Fair Use].

Shannara wrote:

"raping his mother's phone bill" ??? someone need to be taken out and shot.

People use strong linguistic expressions without acknowledging the terminology from which those expressions were derived from all the time, unfortunately as "there are no words strong enough to express the strength of meaning of certain actions and emotions [that have not been over-used/watered down in common usage/been connected with strong actions]". Similar usage can be found with the words "nigga", "fag", "gay", "shit", "bitch", "fuck", etc. I don't believe that it would necessarily be temporarily conducive for anyone to be taken out and shot, however [though, from what could be perceived as a morally-absent point of view, I'd think that shooting the man would be some form of Social Darwinism].

Aww, I kept waiting for Duke to drop down the ventilation shaft, cursor turned at an up-and-to-the-right angle, ready to fire on the alien standing out in the open on the box as soon as he hit the ground. Too bad.

Will be something else using a mouse to play this, instead of a joystick like I did way back when.

Somebody please please please do this for Doom and Doom II. I was really hoping Doom III would do this. It was an okay game, but my biggest disappointment was that it wasn't just a recreation of the original D1+2 levels with better graphics. Honestly, Doom II should be studied by anyone designing levels for shooters as an example of almost perfectly designed levels from a playability perspective. Would love to replay those levels in an updated graphics environment.

Somebody please please please do this for Doom and Doom II. I was really hoping Doom III would do this. It was an okay game, but my biggest disappointment was that it wasn't just a recreation of the original D1+2 levels with better graphics. Honestly, Doom II should be studied by anyone designing levels for shooters as an example of almost perfectly designed levels from a playability perspective. Would love to replay those levels in an updated graphics environment.

Though it doesn't sport this level of graphics, you should check out the Doomsday ports.

How's that? One 3d shooter game over a decade ago, a few DOS platformers before it, and Manhattan Project platformer than nobody even noticed? If it wasn't for the ridicule surrounding DNF for years very few people would still remember Duke Nukem.

I don't think this is true. Duke Nukem Forever is not using Unreal 3. I think that it's actually using a very heavily modified version of the original Unreal engine. If this version of Duke Nukem 3D is using the Unreal 3 engine, then they aren't using the same engine at all.

Sorry Gameplay and mechanics is everything without it games are film only are written look worse and more frustrating to finish due to poor interaction implantation. The new standard is a low one...I want the old standards back...

He never said gameplay wasn't important. He said that graphics have always been ALSO important and that you're just forgetting it. And he's right. Graphics have ALWAYS been a key element in games. I don't care if it's a point and click adventure, RTS or FPS or Tetris. At EVERY point in the history of games, improving upon graphics was a KEY for each new generation of games. You just don't remember it.

Sorry Gameplay and mechanics is everything without it games are film only are written look worse and more frustrating to finish due to poor interaction implantation. The new standard is a low one...I want the old standards back...

He never said gameplay wasn't important. He said that graphics have always been ALSO important and that you're just forgetting it. And he's right. Graphics have ALWAYS been a key element in games. I don't care if it's a point and click adventure, RTS or FPS or Tetris. At EVERY point in the history of games, improving upon graphics was a KEY for each new generation of games. You just don't remember it.

Text games like the original Zork didn't depend upon graphics except in the strictest sense. Advancement maybe?

I agree: it looks bland. What is it about FPSes and the brown/olive/dirt-fetish?

Also, the video is lame. It's the f*cking roof! Seriously, that takes anybody with some decent UnrealEd expertise about 30 minutes to cobble together. Granted using non-selfmade textures, but I wouldn't bet on the textures in the vid being selfmade.

EDIT: yep, it seems he just used standard textures. And apparently this guy is starting these projects up regularly. So I wouldn't expect much...

Trying to showcase that tiny spot is ridiculous. And the Death Row screenshots are ugly.

I was almost p*ssing my pants when I read these news, expecting something as awesome as Black Mesa. Well, maybe it can be in the future. At least they have the rights.

10 years ago I tried a similar project using the Worldcraft editor (Half-Life's Quake2-engine tool). It was a lot of fun, but the Quake-Engine had no real-time lighting and once my Hollywood Holocaust got to ~10% of what I wanted, the compiling times for a level-build were rising above 30 minutes (Celeron 400, 128 MB RAM) and it became a chore. And man was I pissed when I found out that UnrealEd could do it all in real-time, even back then. Ah, good times...

Sorry Gameplay and mechanics is everything without it games are film only are written look worse and more frustrating to finish due to poor interaction implantation. The new standard is a low one...I want the old standards back...

He never said gameplay wasn't important. He said that graphics have always been ALSO important and that you're just forgetting it. And he's right. Graphics have ALWAYS been a key element in games. I don't care if it's a point and click adventure, RTS or FPS or Tetris. At EVERY point in the history of games, improving upon graphics was a KEY for each new generation of games. You just don't remember it.

Text games like the original Zork didn't depend upon graphics except in the strictest sense. Advancement maybe?

Zork used just about every bit of RAM in a 8-bit computer. The graphics *were* as good as they could be:).

You would be hard pressed to find many great games that didn't have great graphics. Back in the day, a dedicated programmer (and later team) would polish the game as best he could. The end result pushed the platform as far as it could go. Best guess as to when this was no longer true (and the general pining for gameplay vs. eyecandy began) was about the time shading routines took over.

My guesses about this are that gameplay was never lost due to obsession about graphics (it is less now that it ever was during any so-called golden-age*), just that modern production teams (including the art department) are so unwieldy that gameplay gets lost in endless meetings. I'd also claim that raytraced based rendering is likely a good idea. Not for better graphics (AAA coding budgets + shading processors will almost always look better), but to allow far smaller teams to make reasonably good graphics (just hit it with some light and it will look great. Not "perfect", but great).

Sorry Gameplay and mechanics is everything without it games are film only are written look worse and more frustrating to finish due to poor interaction implantation. The new standard is a low one...I want the old standards back...

He never said gameplay wasn't important. He said that graphics have always been ALSO important and that you're just forgetting it. And he's right. Graphics have ALWAYS been a key element in games. I don't care if it's a point and click adventure, RTS or FPS or Tetris. At EVERY point in the history of games, improving upon graphics was a KEY for each new generation of games. You just don't remember it.

*sigh* For every jump in graphics you get 2-10 jumps in mechanics.... you just don't get it....

Scott Robinson wrote:

Ostracus wrote:

Emon wrote:

ZippyDSMlee wrote:

Sorry Gameplay and mechanics is everything without it games are film only are written look worse and more frustrating to finish due to poor interaction implantation. The new standard is a low one...I want the old standards back...

He never said gameplay wasn't important. He said that graphics have always been ALSO important and that you're just forgetting it. And he's right. Graphics have ALWAYS been a key element in games. I don't care if it's a point and click adventure, RTS or FPS or Tetris. At EVERY point in the history of games, improving upon graphics was a KEY for each new generation of games. You just don't remember it.

Text games like the original Zork didn't depend upon graphics except in the strictest sense. Advancement maybe?

Zork used just about every bit of RAM in a 8-bit computer. The graphics *were* as good as they could be:).

You would be hard pressed to find many great games that didn't have great graphics. Back in the day, a dedicated programmer (and later team) would polish the game as best he could. The end result pushed the platform as far as it could go. Best guess as to when this was no longer true (and the general pining for gameplay vs. eyecandy began) was about the time shading routines took over.

My guesses about this are that gameplay was never lost due to obsession about graphics (it is less now that it ever was during any so-called golden-age*), just that modern production teams (including the art department) are so unwieldy that gameplay gets lost in endless meetings. I'd also claim that raytraced based rendering is likely a good idea. Not for better graphics (AAA coding budgets + shading processors will almost always look better), but to allow far smaller teams to make reasonably good graphics (just hit it with some light and it will look great. Not "perfect", but great).

This X million, back in the day had much more emphasis on game play, these days you have theme(style of the visual fiction) and graphics that come before game play, and when you add time constraints gameplay gets the least amount of polish time.

In some ways we have returned to the later Atari era generic shovel ware, over saturation, limited game play due to rushing everything to market.

Tho the beginning of the Atari era there was much more game play advancement than what we have today, hell the NES(later 8bit) and SNES16bit) eras were constantly evolving and we have grown little if any in the last 10 years of modern gaming.... I love video gaming but I am mechanic centric and weak mechanics make me sad.

Tho the beginning of the Atari era there was much more game play advancement than what we have today

Of course. Because they came from nothing. Cars also evolved faster around the turn of the 20th century than at the turn of 21st.

Also, people tend to compare mediocre games of today with the classics of 30 years ago. They forget all the bad games or clones (even more blatant than today). If one compares Dragon Age:Origins to Zork or Ultima and finds it inferior (or less original), I call pre-bias.

And people also overhype those classics who are from today's point of view just garbage. I recently played Zork (due to the Kindle-Article here on Ars) and find it to be bad in every way. No story, no plot, bad writing, bad parser... in the 70s it was an accomplishment just to get it done though.